Suan Lum Night Bazaar

On our last night in Bangkok, we decided to check out the Suan Lum Night Bazaar. We would have used the MRT since there was a station just near the bazaar but it was raining so we decided to take a taxi. (Again, the driver insisted on a fixed price instead of the meter.)

I read that this Night Bazaar was supposed to close down by April 2007 but fortunately for us it was still open.

There are so many interesting things to see in the night bazaar but I also read that prices here are inflated compared to other markets like Chatuchak or Patpong. So sharpen those haggling skills and prepare to bargain as they expect you to.

I also saw a lot of leather goods that I like and actually came home with a few good steals myself like my new wallet below. It's made of cow's hide and thick leather. It smelled like papaitan for a few days but I love it.

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Sunshine Tacos, 24 hours Mexican Grill, Sukhumvit, Bangkok

For those wanting to take a break from Asian cuisine, you can try this quaint little Mexican grill in Sukhumvit. They are open 24 hours and they serve a mean burrito.

They have these little checklists on the table and you can choose what goes into your burrito or taco.

What's interesting is when we entered we were greeted by mostly Filipino servers. I asked them how come they're mostly Filipino and if the owner is Filipino too and the server explained that the owner is from Florida and they used to have a lot Thai servers but most of the customers that eat at their place are Westerners and that Filipinos understand and speak better English. That's good for Pinoys in Bangkok.

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Limoncello, Pizzeria, Sukhumvit, Bangkok

I love to eat! And I love Italian food the most. So I looked for an Italian food place with good reviews and reasonable prices and found Limoncello also on Soi 11.

Limoncello serves pizzas cooked in a traditional wood fired oven. Just how I like 'em.

If you ignore my silly face, you'll see the oven and pizza being made.

I love food so much, I constantly forget to take pictures as soon as they are served. That's why if ever I do have pictures of the food I try, it's usually been partially eaten. We ordered the Pizza Limoncello which had tomato, ham, mushroom, mozzarella cheese, gorgonzola cheese and rocket leaves. Sadly, the pizza didn't make it for photo ops.

Seafood in tomato soup

We also had the seafood in tomato soup and I loved it! As for the pasta, I was quite disappointed. I ordered Taglialini con salsiccia (Home-made angel hair pasta with Italian sausages and mushroom) and from the picture below you can tell that the noodles are weird. I have eaten a lot of Italian food and this one tasted like pancit. It tasted more like Chinese food than Italian. For this dish, I say, I prefer my own cooking.

But I did notice that the table beside us ordered the same thing except they asked for a different type of pasta.

Taglialini con salsiccia

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Bangkok, Thailand Night 2

Bangkok Jam

I brought Jorey back to Siam Square that night to see if he wanted to buy something from there. There was this store selling nice casual wingtip shoes with rubber soles. I know my brother would just go crazy in that shop because he just bought a wingtip vans in patent leather.

MBK mall

From Siam Square, we walked all the way to MBK mall. I'm pretty sure I've been to MBK before because I remember from inside, it looked like Farmer's Plaza in Cubao. Bangkok's traffic jams is also just as bad as Manila and most taxi cabs ask for a fixed price instead of basing the fare on the meter. But when it's traffic and you're tired you eventually give in to it even if their asking price is twice as much as you would pay had you put on the meter. Nevertheless, it was a fun night. We also saw some breakdancers (or whatever they are called these days) showing off their moves at the National Stadium station.

We ended up having dinner at Burger King. We were too tired to even think about where to eat and you know you can't go wrong with a Whopper meal. I'm a dessert person and I couldn't resist their brownie with vanilla ice cream and fudge. Jor was playing with his dessert and he was sticking the brownie in his teeth and giving everyone that was passing by a silly smile. It was hilarious!

Veneers please?

Didn't your mother tell you not to play with your food?

I only realized when I was going through our pictures that this is the only picture we have together. To think that I was telling him we should have more pictures of us in places we've been too.

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Bangkok, Thailand Day 2

Nothing says vacation to me like a good breakfast buffet and Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit breakfast has certainly one of the best.

For Day 2 of my Bangkok trip, I was left to wander alone and explore the streets of Bangkok. I decided to go to Siam Square and check out the independent fashion scene in Bangkok. Siam Square is just below the Siam station which is four stations away from the hotel (Asok) via the BTS Skytrain. That area is surrounded by malls but I think malls are pretty much the same in every country. I've read that some up and coming designers set up small boutiques in Siam Square so I went for a leisurely walk there instead. Needless to say, there were a lot of interesting stuff in Siam Square. I even found a few nice quality leather goods that I like except they weren't really selling at a bargain.

Normally, I would have tried eating street food but since I was alone and wasn't too confident about the state of my tummy at that time (believe me when my tummy reacts, it explodes) so I decided to just come back to Rosabieng for late lunch.

This time I ordered food that to me was synonymous to Thailand - Tom yum and pad thai.

Tom yum

Pad thai

The food at Rosabieng is good and reasonably priced. My total bill was 380 Baht and I almost forgot to take pictures. The pictures above are half-eaten hehe. But the service could use some improvement.

I ate there around 4pm and I was really the only person dining except for a few who prefer to dine al fresco. There were at least 2 girls manning the inside and 1 was constantly there but her back was turned to me the whole time and she either she was ignoring me or didn't notice when I said "Excuse me" or waived my hand because I wanted to get some dessert. So when she finally noticed, I asked for the bill instead.

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Basil Restaurant, Sukhumvit, Bangkok

The Sala

Hubby and I were planning to have buffet dinner at The Sala because I was craving for seafood and I saw their selection while they were preparing the buffet. The Sala is at the hotel's pool deck so it was an outdoor dining experience. I was already planning how to pace myself for the buffet but it rained pretty hard so we opted to eat at Basil instead with a business colleague of hubby's.

Basil Restaurant

Basilis the Thai restaurant at the lobby level of the Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit Hotel. We ordered an appetizer sampler, the deep fried fish, roasted duck slices in red curry with green apples, mixed mushrooms in red curry, chicken with cashews, and had a bottle of wine. There was no need to order rice because they served 3 kinds of rice - white, brown, and green.

Sadly, I forgot to bring my camera with me so no pictures of food for visual aid. But the food was good and the service was great. My favorite was the roasted duck in red curry. What immediately ran through my mind as I tasted it was "mmm...red meat...yumm". The fish was delicious too. The least one I liked was the chicken with cashew which was a recommendation from the server. It was ordinary and not worth the space it occupies in my tummy. I would have been just as satisfied without the chicken dish so it didn't really give any added value. The restaurant is on the pricey side but I guess it's expected of hotel restaurants. Our total bill was 5500 Baht for 3 persons.

I'm not a wine drinker. More or less I know connoisseurs swirl the glass, stick their nose in it, gargle it a bit (and spit it out sometimes) but I have no idea what makes good wine. I just go by my own taste - some wines I can't even finish a glass and some I can have as many glasses as I can afford. Fortunately, the wine was fruity and nice.

Barsu

I got a little tipsy from all that red wine plus the complimentary sparkling wine I had before dinner. Hubby's colleague wanted to check out the bar at the ground floor - Barsu. I had a mojito. If you're someone who loves 80's or 90's music then this bar is for you. I heard music from NKOTB, Bobby Brown among others.

Pictures on this post are not mine.

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Bangkok, Thailand Day 1

I'm back in Bangkok a second time. I'm staying at the Sukhumvit area this time and it's been about 4 years since my last trip here.

On my first visit, I thought Bangkok looked like Quiapo, Manila which, to say the least, is not the most appealing part of Manila - not that I didn't have fun the last time. The area we stayed at this time reminds me of Taft, Manila.

Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit

This time I'm with chubby hubby and we stayed at the Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit - nice rooms, nice service, very posh. The location is very strategic because it has direct access to the skytrain Asok station and the Sukhumvit MRT station. That means you'd seldom go down the street level to hail a taxi and ask for a meter. You can easily get around using the Skytrain, the MRT and a little walking. It's a big leap in terms of luxury from the hotel my family stayed at last time we were here. Budget really makes a big difference.

Rosabieng

We had lunch at Rosabieng on 3 Sukhumvit Soi 11. I picked it off the restaurant list in the Bangkok 101 magazine that came with the hotel room. It was the nearest one to our hotel with a $ out of $$$ rating. The description said "The shorts-clad tourists sitting in cheapish chairs might make you look for another restaurant..." so I was expecting a canteen type of ambiance. What's good about setting low expectations is that odds are higher that you will be pleasantly surprised. From outside, it looks like a house that's been converted to a restaurant but the ambiance is quite cozy and casual. Rosabieng means "train dining car" which would explain the miniature train display inside the restaurant.

Pla-sum-lee-todd-yum-ma-maong (Deep fried king fish with spicy shredded mango salad)

Kao-clook-ka-pi (Shrimp-paste fried rice with sweet marinated pork, dried shrimp, egg and vegetable / Bagoong fried rice)

Apple crepe with orange sauce and vanilla ice cream

The menu had a lot of choices but the write-up did say that the variety did not affect the quality of food they serve. So we decided to try the Pla-sum-lee-todd-yum-ma-maong or simply deep fried king fish with spicy shredded mango salad and the Kao-clook-ka-pi or Shrimp-paste fried rice with sweet marinated pork, dried shrimp, egg and vegetable, better known to me as Bagoong fried rice, and, of course, a meal ain't complete without dessert so we had apple crepe with orange sauce and vanilla ice cream. Our total bill was 430 Baht.

The write-up was right on the spot because everything we ordered was delicious! Hubby even described the fish as fantastic. I can't even pick which one I liked best. But the dressing for the shredded mango salad interests me because I've always wondered how to make that dressing. My moderately experienced taste buds would say it's a combination of fish sauce, an acid like lime maybe, and sugar though I can't imagine at what proportions.

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Honda Bay, Palawan

I'm not the party going type so I like places that are slow paced and not too crowded. If it's isolated then better. That's why I like going to Palawan.

The last time I've been there was July 2006 with my brother, his ex-girlfriend-now-wifey, her sister, my cousin and my cousin-in-law. Our cousins were visiting from the States and they wanted to go to Palawan. But as much as we wanted to bring them to a resort, we didn't have that much moolah to spend so we went on a Survivor: Palawan kind of vacation theme. At least it was a new experience for my cousins from the US.

Our first stop was Honda Bay. My grandma and her sisters owns this huge island in Honda Bay that's almost deserted except for the caretaker who's a distant relative.

To save on the boat ride to the island instead of renting pump boats we were brought there by a relative's fishing boat which was much smaller than the pump boats for rent. The boat ride itself provided excitement because we were there during the rainy season and it started raining while we were halfway through the island. Our small boat could feel even the small waves left by other passing boats and we were doing a cat and mouse chase with the oncoming rains.

Heavy rains playing chase with our boat.

Good thing the rains stopped and the sun shone, quite intensely, actually. We had lunch at our grandma's island. We had a make shift barbecue place where we barbecued fish and longaniza and corn that we harvested ourselves. Then we collected coconuts and cousin Gino gladly took the itak and sliced off the top of the coconut so we can get fresh buko juice. We also had sand crabs or kuday as it's called locally. It had a bittersweet taste and a really dark brown almost black juice. My mom loves it but I prefer regular crabs. I think they're an acquired taste.

Lunch

My sister-in-law is eating corn with the husks

Our next stop was Starfish Island for some snorkeling. Starfish Island is a small sandbar in Honda Bay. I think it's one of the regular stops if you go on a tour of Honda Bay.

Starfish Island

When we got off the boat there were a number of small jellyfish. The kind that looked like plastic which means they're the kind that stings. I'm scared of jellyfish so I passed up snorkeling and just collected bakalan a type of shellfish and made kinilaw out of it. It didn' t however stop my cousins from snorkeling. :)

How to get there:
Puerto Princesa City, Palawan is about 1 hr 30 minute plane ride away from Manila. Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific Airlines both fly to PPC from Manila.

When you get there ask the lodge where you're staying at about Honda Bay Day Tours.

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Shangri-La Mactan, Cebu

Since it's summer and there's no day that I haven't been thinking about the beach, I thought why not reminisce about my best beach vacations.

The white building is Shangri-La, the pink ones, I think, is Hilton

The first one I'm gonna write about is our trip to Mactan, Cebu last November 2006. This was a memorable one because Jorey and I went there for our engagement pictures. During this time, I still wasn't allowed to go with Jorey to anywhere where it was just the two of us because we weren't married yet. (My family's what I would call selective conservative - conservative only when it comes to girls.) So mom came with us for the trip. :)

I took this shot of myself while tinkering with my timer and tripod.

The weather was perfect!

We stayed at Shangri-La, Mactan and it's probably one of the best hotels I've ever stayed at. The white sand beach was very clean and beautiful. The breakfast buffet was superb. The best thing about it was there were a lot of places that made good engagement pictures - coz that's what we came for aside from some fun in the sun.

I didn't take my own pictures at Plantation Bay but this one from our engagement pics is my favorite.

We also took a few pictures at the Plantation Bay, which was not far away from Shangri-La. I suppose some people would find it nice but it wasn't really appealing to me. The resort had a hollywood studio/theme park vibe going, it looks good in pictures but up close and personal... not really my type. It looked too man-made for my taste.

One thing I like about Cebu is that a lot of the 1st class Philippine exports come from here. So before we went back we just had to pass by Avatar's building to score some cute accessories.

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So where in the world is Noee?

Noee (that's me!) is presently in Singapore and this is my newest blog.

I don't really travel as often as I'd like but I suddenly felt an urge to create a journal of all the places I've ever been to. Somewhere in this world, I've left my own little footprint and I want to remember them all.

I maybe even give reviews of the hotels I've stayed at. Hopefully my entries can help you plan your vacations but ultimately, this blog is for keeping memories alive.

Enjoy!

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